blog audience = future Keith

There has been no comments on my latest posts, so I feel pretty confident no one is reading this. (maybe there is a way to count hits to this site, but i don't know it and am too lazy to figure it out, which is I guess my way of saying I'm smart enough to figure it out, but I choose not to. But also, there might not be a way to do it simply and therefore I feel good in my decision not to try to figure out how to count hits) But the end result is I feel about 97% sure no one is reading this. So then why I am a continuing to write? I guess I would like to consider a journal of thoughts that I would some day like to look back to. So my main audience is myself at some time in the future. OK future Keith, here you go:

My current readings

I know I have a bit of OCD, but I'm not sure how much. I'm definitely a checker. I like to doublecheck that I have my car keys in hand before exiting my car. And then I make sure to lock the doors from the inside lock button and additionally with the remote locking button. I think this is to ensure that I don't have to worry about it later. And I will worry about it.

Then there is the use of eggs. I'm not sure how most people choose the eggs from a carton. For me, I have very defined rules. That already sounds crazy, but the main rule is to keep the leftover eggs arranged symmetrically from left to right. Second priority/rule is to keep the leftover eggs arranged symmetrically from front to back. I decided at some point that this is necessary to maintain an equal weight distribution and thereby reduce the chances of dropping all the eggs. I have never dropped a carton of eggs, nor have I ever seen a carton of eggs dropped. The probability even without an even weight distribution has to be ridiculously low. But yet I cannot stop myself from this behavior. The third and most likely strangest part of this is that I don't want to keep the same pattern each time. I like adding a bit of randomness. Maybe this is so I have a problem to solve? I'm not sure. But then there is also the problem of how do I make it random when I am the one choosing where to start each time? My beautiful wife is probably unaware of this and does not abide by these rules. That doesn't bother me at all and really only helps the situation because if I am choosing eggs after she has already removed some, I just make an effort to even things out. Then there is also the amount of eggs needed for whatever I'm making. I don't add eggs or throw out eggs to even things out. I just try to get close to the even weight distribution.

Now we get to my current reading situation. In the past, I have tried to only read one book at a time. I used to have trouble keeping track of lots of characters, and therefore thought it best to only read one book at a time. Also, the time I would dedicate to reading was low, so I may have a break of two weeks between sessions of reading, which can make it tough to follow multiple books. Since I am currently without a job, I have lots of time to read (also lots of time to write in a blog). There are also 5 books I currently have and want to read. So I have decided to try for the first time reading multiple books at once.

This immediately caused a problem of how much of each book do I read? I'm not able to feel my way through the situation and just go with whatever I'm in the mood for. I can never figure out what I'm in the mood for with the exception of sex. Nope, I need rules.

But what rules would work best for this situation? I think the ideal would be to finish each book at the same time and to not allow multiple days go by without reading out any one of them. One difficulty is that the books have large variations in length: 1. Chuck Palahniuk's book on Portland = 175 pages; 2. Chuck Palahniuk's Snuff = 197 pages; 3. DiLorenzo's The Real Lincoln = 305 pages; 4. Card's Ender's Game = 324 pages; 5. Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground = 91 pages. I can't just read a set amount of pages from each one, because then I would be stopping at places. I much prefer stopping at the author's defined locations like chapter ends. The chapter lengths are of course not setup for my problem.

So my solution is to start each morning with reading a full section or chapter of each book. Dostoevsky thus far has been kind in providing short chapters, which is good for my problem and good because that is some heavy reading. After the chapters are done, I keep a notepad of pages read and pages left. I then order the books based on relative book percentages left to read. Whatever needs more reading is first inline for reading during the day or most likely that night before bed. Before bed reading is stopped by me falling asleep. And that is pretty much my plan.

I don't know what level of OCD this is, but it is a decent glimpse of how I live my life. The only other addition I would make is that I am also constantly abandoning plans and coming up with new ones. I think I enjoy that process more than the actual carrying out of a plan.

Beagle's Cancer

Beagle was diagnosed with cancer back in January. It started in her thyroid and has already spread to her lungs. The thyroid tumor is vascular making it impossible to remove by surgery and the cancer in her lungs is not possible to fix. This cancer is what will eventually kill my beagle.

The doctors gave her two to three months to live. It is now four months later and she is still looking about as good as she did in January. Her impending death looms over me though, and brings melancholy and fear.

I have been able to and still can make myself cry just thinking about her dying. She has slept next to me every night for the last 8 years. She follows me everywhere I go in the house. She greets me with great love and excitement every time I come home. She sits on guard outside the bathroom when I take a shower. Even now, she is sitting in my lap as I write this.

The tennis ball size tumor on her throat has begun affecting her breathing. Most of the time, she sleeps with her neck stretched as much as she can. The cancer appears to have also spread to her leg causing her a slight limp. Her spirit is strong though. She can still wail with the best beagles out there and her love for food has not waned.

There has been very little death in my life to this point. One grandfather died when I was 3 or 4. Two other grandparents died within the last ten years, and that was sad, but my grandparents are only in my life every three months or so and not known that intimately. The family dog, however, is very close and part of every day life. The first dog I was aware of, Liza, died when I was very young and I don't really know that much about it.

The second dog, Kasey, was tougher to take. Kasey was a poorly trained flea-ridden mostly cocker spaniel mutt. She had something called cocker epilepsy that caused her to often attack ferociously a room corner or sometimes people. Toward the end, her epilepsy was getting much worse to where she began attacking family members and she had many disgusting moles. In short, she became difficult to live with. She went in to the vet for a tooth problem, where it was discovered she had some kind of mouth cancer. The Vet wanted over $1,000 bucks to fix and even then it was unknown how long she would survive. Euthanasia was the best option and the Vet agreed. The Vet discussed all of this with my father over the phone. He then called my sister and I to get our approval. We complied and Kasey was put down.

It was very sad that afternoon and generally sad the following week. After a short time though, I no longer missed her. Her death was made easier by her body and condition getting worse over her final 3 or so years. And then all was easily forgotten when we got our new dog, Kelsey.

Kelsey was an awesome dog as I discussed in a previous post. She just died a couple of weeks ago. It was easy for me to take the news, because I was really only a part of Kelsey's life the last two years of high school. We grew apart when I left the house. And in her case again, she started to get run down the last couple of years. Her body started to look unhealthy and her spirit was kind of broken by the introduction of another dog in my mom's house.

And that is all the experience I've had with death. My little beagle will be on a whole different level. I got her when she was six weeks old. I let her sleep next to me in bed so she could sleep better to the sound of my heart beating. Right now, she is still cute as ever. I have no idea how her cancer will progress, and I'm frightened of it. She has depended on me for so long, and now I can do nothing for her. What horrible condition of pain and suffering will she get to, before I decide to take her for euthanasia? And then I imagine sitting next to her while the doctor gives her a shot and watching her last breath. It tears me apart to think about it. It makes me wish I never had her in the first place. Was all the joy she has brought me over the years worth the pain I'm going to feel?

Enough with the Drums at US Soccer games

One big problem with American soccer (other than the lack of good players) is the assholes that show with the Samba drums. When you have crowds of almost 5,000 people in stadiums that can seat 25,000 people, a couple of guys banging with no rhythm on some samba drums is really annoying. And then they get extra attention on TV where I think they enjoy placing a mic nearby so the viewer can be annoyed just like the fans at the game. These people are a menace and must be stopped.

Rock Band

Found some excellent review of Rock Band and Guitar Hero by Derek Wilson.

From the review: "There are actually quite a few songs that, while I had heard them before, I gained a real appreciation for them after playing them on Rock Band 2. If the beat or the melody or bass line or whatever is interesting and fun to play, the songs actually gain another attribute to the listener that can be positive or negative. It's sort of surreal and meta, but the special sauce on the music game genre is the fact that the music impacts the likability of the game while the game can also affect the perception of the music, creating a sort of echo chamber where appreciation for music is able to expand. Additionally, because of the way our brains access memories by association, hearing a song that was fun to play on Rock Band 2, whether you knew the song before you heard it in the game, can subconsciously enhance your enjoyment of the song."

I totally agree. Then on page 10 he writes about the rock band 2 song difficulty ratings. He says that there is a difference between a zero and 5 red devils, but then means nothing when you compare a 1 to a 5. Now I definitely agree with the first statement. But I think I can feel an overall difference (across easy, medium, and hard difficulty levels) that 1's are most of the times easier than 3's and then 3's are overall easier than 5's. I have seen exceptions and I think there is plenty of room for improvement.

First of all, I would really like to know how they determined those ratings. Derek makes a good point that it would really help if they further broke it down by the difficulty level you are playing. So how did they come up with the ratings? What data did they collect? Is it an average of some test group? What test group?

I think they should be pulling the song results data from all the people logged into XBOX Live and playing the game. And in the least, using that data to determine better difficulty ratings. They could then provide an update to the ratings on some kind of reasonable schedule. They definitely don't need to be paying a test group.

Gramps and Offspring

The other night while rocking some Offspring on Rock Band, I remembered a strange occurrence with my grandfather involving Offspring.

I think it was Christmas of 1994. Gramps had given me my first ever CD player in the form of boom box. My sister followed this with giving me my first ever CD, Offspring's Smash album. Later that morning I went to the basement with the boombox and played the CD.

I think overall Smash is an innocent album. There is some cursing mixed in, but the words are typically difficult to understand unless you really pay attention. That is except for one small section of the song Bad Habit. Toward the end of the song, all of the instruments stop and it is just the singer's voice yelling "You stupid dumbshit goddam motherfucker."

Of course this part of the song came on right as Gramps walked into the room. We both kind of froze. Gramps has never scolded me and this was no exception. He just walked over and grabbed some trash to take out, basically ignoring what had happened. I also ignored it and that was the end of it.

I would probably not think too much of it, but I had very few experiences with Gramps that were just the two of us. This was probably one of about five. He died 5 years later. I regret that we didn't get to know each other better. And I regret that this was the only knowledge he ever had of my musical taste. Especially since he is a man who owned a radio station and loves music.

Gene and Bonnie

Gene and his wife Bonnie live across the street. They are renting a house pretty much identical to mine. They are a very friendly retired couple that really have nothing to do. So they are constantly doing work in their yard and on their house. Again, they are renting the house. They have the best looking front yard on the street complete with a fountain and small gold fish pond. I have also found out that Gene has built a deck in their backyard. This was all paid for by them, with the owner's approval of course. Pretty much the best possible tenants anyone could hope for.

Christina and I will be trying to sell the house this summer. There are currently about 100 houses or roughly 30% of the houses for sale in our neighborhood, and I'd say about 50 of those are also identical to my house. One of them on our street was put on the market a couple of weeks ago for 179. They are now down to 139. Basically, I expect a lot of difficulty selling our house in this market. Pretty sad since 2 years ago, I could of sold our house for 200. Such are the times we are living in.

So it is clear that the best possible situation would be for me to convince Gene and Bonnie to move in to our house and rent from me. I am a terrible salesman though. I'm not sure the best way to approach it, but I must begin laying some groundwork soon.